An aircraft carrier costs $13 billion. An anti-ship cruise missile costs $2 million. Few surface warships survived the first day of the Singularity War.
A cruise missile is a complex machine, guided by sensitive electronics. Semiconductor fabricators are even more complex machines. Few semiconductor factories survived the nuclear retaliation.
A B-52 Stratofortress is a simpler machine.
Robert (Bob) Manchester’s bomber flew west from Boeing Field. The crew disassembled their landing gear and dropped it in the Pacific Ocean. The staticy voice of Mark Campbell, Leader of the Human Resistance, radioed into Robert’s headset. Robert could barely hear it over the noise of the engines. He turned the volume up. It would damage his hearing but that didn’t matter anymore. The attack wouldn’t save America. Nothing could at this point. But the attack might buy time to launch a few extra von Neumann probes.
The squadron flew over miles after miles of automated factories. What was once called Tianjin was now just Sector 153. The first few flak cannons felt perfunctory. The anti-air fire increased as they drew closer to enemy network hub. Robert dropped the bombs. The pilot, Peter Garcia, looked for a target to kamikaze.
They drew closer to the ground. Robert Manchester looked out the window. He wondered why the Eurasian AI had chosen to structure its industry around such humanoid robots.
An aircraft carrier costs $13 billion. An anti-ship cruise missile costs $2 million. Few surface warships survived the first day of the Singularity War.
A cruise missile is a complex machine, guided by sensitive electronics. Semiconductor fabricators are even more complex machines. Few semiconductor factories survived the nuclear retaliation.
A B-52 Stratofortress is a simpler machine.
Robert (Bob) Manchester’s bomber flew west from Boeing Field. The crew disassembled their landing gear and dropped it in the Pacific Ocean. The staticy voice of Mark Campbell, Leader of the Human Resistance, radioed into Robert’s headset. Robert could barely hear it over the noise of the engines. He turned the volume up. It would damage his hearing but that didn’t matter anymore. The attack wouldn’t save America. Nothing could at this point. But the attack might buy time to launch a few extra von Neumann probes.
The squadron flew over miles after miles of automated factories. What was once called Tianjin was now just Sector 153. The first few flak cannons felt perfunctory. The anti-air fire increased as they drew closer to enemy network hub. Robert dropped the bombs. The pilot, Peter Garcia, looked for a target to kamikaze.
They drew closer to the ground. Robert Manchester looked out the window. He wondered why the Eurasian AI had chosen to structure its industry around such humanoid robots.